Can contemporary rap be categorized under contemporary poetry?

1. How is sound used today in contemporary poetry?
2. What is the line between music and poetry?
3. Within the world of contemporary poetry, what is the difference between Slam poetry and Rap?
4. Can poetry be sung?

When looking into depth at the relationship between contemporary poetry and sound, we must first establish what contemporary poetry is. As defined by the English dictionary, ‘contemporary’ means: living or occurring at the same time. I will take this into meaning that ‘contemporary poetry’ refers to poems that have been written in the 21st century. After exploring different types of contemporary poetry, such as Flarf and Slam poetry, a very distinct theme is present amongst the different works; sound. If we were to think of words as sounds, we would fine that within poetry speed, volume and tone are all contributors towards what the poem is trying to convey. It can be argued that, as words become more abstract, especially in contemporary poetry, sound plays a bigger role than diction. While poets such as de Kurt Schwitters’s ‘Ursonate’, a poem that includes many repetitions and synonyms, employ the use of words to spell out sound. Other poets such as Gary Sullivan in his ‘Chick Dig Oil Spills’, words are actually sung. Sound in contemporary poetry has broken the boundaries of ‘tone’ within literature, taking into its arms music and as the English dictionary defines sound in terms of phonetics and speech; the audible result of an utterance or portion of an utterance: the s-sound in “slight”; the sound of m in “mere”.

• Sean Williams- Slam 1998.
• The spoken word revolution : slam, hip-hop & the poetry of a new generation / edited by Mark Eleveld ; advised by Marc Smith ; introduction by Billy Collins.

• URSONATE de Kurt Schwitters

• Tyler The Creator - Yonkers

• The Anthology of Rap

- Emma